Blogging about my Astronomy class at Vanderbilt University. Is Anybody Out There? While eating lunch with some colleagues in 1950, Enrico Fermi made an innocent yet profound comment about life in the universe. As a well-known physicist, Fermi knew that the universe was old enough to possibly have other life present, especially within the Milky Way.

The Dos Equis guy of blogs. Public and private solutions to space exploration. I firmly believe that for space exploration to grow by leaps and bounds, there has to be economic incentives for entrepreneurs to create companies that explore the universe. Governmental agencies can do incredible things, but they are often held back by politics and budgetary shortfalls. Not faster than light, but still incredible.

This is the first-full color photo taken of Pluto ever that NASA published. Now, I know a few more things. NASA made these bold claims at a press conference.

The Importance Lessons of Astronomy.

The stellar classification classifies stars based on their spectral characteristics. When passing through a prism, light from a star will be split into a spectrum displaying rainbow of colors interspersed with absorption lines. The strength of each line indicates the abundance of a specific ion. The abundance of different ions varies with the temperature of the photosphere. The classification of a star is giving an estimated value of the temperature of photosphere.